Right after his death, a man’s soul was given a choice – to enter the heaven or to go to the hell. He asked if he could visit both before making a decision. The heaven seemed lovely to him, but a bit too boring compared to the hell. The latter was filled with parties, booze, promiscuous women. After that short excursion, he said: ‘I made up my mind, and I’d rather opt for the hell!’
Upon his arrival to the new place of residence, he saw a picture completely different to what was presented to him before. There were no signs of partying and fun whatsoever, just burning pots with sinners, unbearable heat and loads of hard meaningless work turning the coal.
- What the f***? – he asked the devil. – That wasn’t in the brochure, and that’s absolutely not what I was promised during my first trip!
- My friend, – answered the devil – I think you might be confusing tourism with immigration!
Many people from the former Soviet Union countries have heard this joke and, hence, try to stay relatively down-to-earth when it comes to considering a move elsewhere. I had visited London many times for business prior to my move, so I hardly had any illusions that making the most wonderful city in the world my home would be a picnic. I was already familiar with the cost of living (although before the cost-of-living crisis), the wonders of travelling on the tube during peak hour, the way your heart sunk when there was a fault on your train, which meant you would be running late for an important customer meeting, etc. Accepting all of these and many more wasn’t hard. Still, life in the UK still had a lot of surprises for me, and here’s a number of things I found shocking (mostly in a good way) in my first year as a Londoner (COVID aside…)
- Sandwich is a normal meal
OMG, I can still hear my post-Soviet mum saying in unison with all other mums ‘Sandwich is not a meal, it’s a snack at best!’ In the UK, it’s perfectly normal to have a sandwich or two (or more, no judgement!) for a meal and not bother with hot food at all. People born and raised in the former Soviet Union are sort of enshrined with an idea that 3 times a day one is supposed to have a HOT meal. It doesn’t matter much what sort of meal it is, as long as it’s cooked and served piping hot. And yes, hot sandwiches/ toasties are not considered a meal in Belarus either!
My personal attitude: I love sandwiches, so works for me most of the time! On the other hand, I’m in my 30s, which means I’m always looking for a way to have some soup…
- You don’t buy an air humidifier. You buy a DEHUMIDIFIER!
Let’s start with a bit of context here for those lucky people who didn’t have the pleasure of living in or at least visiting any former Soviet countries. Most people in that part of the world live in flats, not (terraced/ semi-detached/ detached) houses, and except for the new builds (‘new’ as in ‘built in the 21st century’), there are no thermostats in flats. In colder months, people rely on central heating, with the idea being that the amount of heat you get in your flat is controlled… well, centrally, from a special unit reporting to something similar to a council in the UK. It means that you don’t get to decide when exactly the heating turns on and how warm it’s going to be in your flat – the council does. And boy, sometimes it gets TOO WARM!
To an extent that the air in Belarusian flats tends to get very dry, which is why many people buy an air humidifier, and I used to be one of those people. In fact, I was probably a bit too reliant on it.
How shocked I was in my first winter in the UK that Amazon did not show me a single air humidifier, but insisted on me needing a DEHUMIDIFIER! Wait, no, I don’t want the air in my flat to get even drier, I need to be able to breathe normally! It took me a while to realise that: a) now I’m in charge of when and to what I extent I heat my place; b) that was a start of my never-ending war with mould…
My personal attitude: how on Earth is it possible that the air in the flat is soooo dry, yet, the mould is still a b**ch and keeps coming back every now and then?!
- Going to the theatre is a WILD party!
When you are a kid in a former Soviet Union country, one of the first social things you learn is how to behave in a theatre or at a concert. Food or drinks are strictly not allowed in the audience, and even if you manage to smuggle any, your mum is going to throw a tantrum so hard as if you were trying to kill a few people, not just munch for a few seconds leading up to the play. Oh, and you HAVE to dress up for when you go to see a play, it’s a special occasion! Oh, and don’t you dare to clap or express your excitement any other way after a part of the play, only after it ends and there’s a curtain call.
Yeah, loads of rules that went right out of the window (or out of my head, to be more precise) after my first visit to a theatre in London. How (pleasantly) surprised was I when I saw that people in the audience didn’t care how they were dressed, munched away and filled up on drinks (alcohol in the audience, yeeeeeees!) and laughed, clapped and enjoyed themselves! And that wasn’t even a musical. That was a presentation of a book by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Not sure if all the musicals I have attended got the same level of excitement and noise…
My personal attitude: yes, please!
- And yes, drinks are oftentimes served in plastic glasses and flutes
If you want to drink outside a pub, you will be handed a plastic glass. If you buy a glass of champagne in a theatre, you will be given a plastic flute. Given I was never requested to give any of the latter back, I now have a neat collection of plastic champagne flutes that come in very handy in the context of my clumsiness.
My personal attitude: that’s brilliant and has probably saved me a few quid in terms of glasses that I didn’t manage to shatter!
TO BE CONTINUED…
Minsk to Mist 
Leave a comment